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This study analyses how family-run businesses operating in the Italian food sector faced the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that affected the global economy, with the support of management accounting systems.

The methodology used is based on a survey questionnaire conducted on Italian family firms involved in food business. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analysed.

This study categorised the companies into three groups, according to their long-term orientation and the use of management accounting tools. The results highlight proactive versus passive companies that emphasise various recovery paths from the perspective of performance.

Limitations refer to the attention on a single country and the sample size.

The main practical implication refers to management at different levels that should better understand how a clear long-term orientation can maintain the competitive position and pre-crisis performance.

This study examines the measures launched by companies to address challenges originating from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the entrepreneurship theory in family firms as it focuses on the relevance of an ambidextrous entrepreneurial strategy (Helfat and Peteraf, 2009), thanks to an effective combination between exploitation and exploration activities. The study refers to the food sector, characterized by established food traditions and changing consumption patterns.

After reviewing the topics, the authors referred to Goel and Jones (2016) for its representativeness for the research. The authors conducted an explanatory case study in which the authors identified the framework’s three sub-systems impacting the above family business systems. The case study is relevant because Eataly, a family-owned and -managed firm, is gaining recognition while applying a strong entrepreneurial strategy and it is unique in the world for the strength of its commercial strategy and dimensions.

Entrepreneurship strategies can be explained by combined organizational antecedent conditions, represented by three sub-systems: family, business and ownership. The sub-systems’ features and their interrelations play a relevant role in influencing entrepreneurial exploration and exploitation processes.

The study contributes to the actual entrepreneurship theory in family firms because it indicates the relevance of an ambidextrous entrepreneurial strategy, thanks to a combination of exploitation and exploration activities. In addition, it analyses the so-called antecedent conditions in organizations to achieve this favorable combination. Limitations involve the case study method and interview technique, both of which could be expanded.

Several practical implications follow for different stakeholder categories (food sector companies, investors and private/public entities) concerning the management of antecedent conditions, the consequences of entrepreneurial investment policy, and tourism and territorial development.

This research is novel because it combines an ambidextrous entrepreneurship approach (Goel and Jones, 2016) with the family firm’s sub-systems (Tagiuri and Davis, 1982), observing how these sub-systems are relevant to defining and managing effective entrepreneurship strategy in a family food firm. The value added is particularly relevant in the food sector, which is characterized by low research and development. In addition, it requires innovative approaches to stimulate customers’ perception of market demand, to satisfy their needs and to sustain family firms in a highly competitive environment.

Crowdfunding platforms are important innovations that allow nascent entrepreneurs to gain access to financial resources and crowd inputs to better refine and develop their business idea. The purpose of this paper is to investigate user-generated content (UGC) from both reward-based and equity-based crowdfunding platforms, in order to determine its implications for open and user innovation.

A total sample of 200 most funded technology products was extracted from four distinct crowdfunding platforms. A latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) analysis was performed in an attempt to identify critical latent factors. The analysis was carried out through the theoretical lens of innovation literature, in an attempt to uncover the implications for open and user innovation.

The authors were able to highlight the implications of crowd inputs for open and user innovation, as backers provided nascent entrepreneurs with several types of feedback, ranging from product co-development to strategy and marketing. Furthermore, the study provided an overview of the key differences emerging between reward-based and equity-based crowdfunding platforms in terms of crowd inputs.

The present study features intrinsic limitations of the LDA approach being adopted. More specifically, it only provides a “snapshot” in time of the current sample, rather than investigating its development over time.

The present study solidifies the value of UGC as a resource to mine for trends and feedback.

The study contributes to both the innovation literature and the crowdfunding literature. It bridges several gaps found in both literature streams, by providing empirical evidence to test and verify pre-existing exploratory research.

Drawing on the conservation of resources theory and need-threat model, this study aims to analyse the mediating role of efficacy needs (EN) and psychological distress (PD) on the relationship between workplace ostracism (WO) and knowledge hiding (KH) behaviour of employees.

Time-lagged data were collected from 225 employees working in the mobile telecommunication sector through online survey instruments prepared in light of past literature. SmartPLS3 was used to analyse the data.

The results obtained confirm the initial hypothesis that there exists a positive relationship between WO and KH. Furthermore, the results also established the sequential mediating roles of EN and PD between WO and KH behaviour of employees.

This study adds to the literature suggesting that WO represents a real threat to companies that aim to foster knowledge-sharing behaviours. Moreover, it reveals that EN and PD are two underlying mechanisms behind the baseline relationship.

To address the growing pressure to foster effectiveness, sustainability and quality of life, local governments have focused on developing policies and initiatives designed to make their cities smarter. Despite the growing attention paid to this issue, an important but under-investigated issue is represented by the smart city governance. In this regard, in light of the claimed need for collaboration, the purpose of this paper is to investigate why and how different institutional works carried out by multiple actors may explain the way in which collaborative governance can be constructed in the context of a smart city.

A rich in-depth case study has been carried out exploring the experience of a smart city in the north of Italy. The study explores the institutional works done by multiple actors (Lawrence et al., 2013) and their influence on the governance of the smart city.

Collaboration is perceived to be instrumental in making a city smart, during the design and implementation phase, while generating new challenges that must be overcome by an integration of the political, technical and, especially, cultural work of the collective actors involved.

Despite governance is recognized as a crucial factor for realizing a smartness-orientation, it is scarcely investigated. The main value of the current research is thus its contribution to overcome this gap providing new empirical evidence on the role of multiple actors in the smart city context.

The purpose of this study is to underscore the impact of the family variable on performance. The authors were interested in understanding whether the differences between Family Firms (FFs) and Non-Family Firms (NFFs), on the one hand, and between large FFs and medium-sized FFs, on the other, were reflected in the performance achieved.

In this paper a sample of 80 industrial companies listed on the Italian Stock Market (FTSE MIB and STAR indexes) were considered, and mixed criteria to distinguish FFs and NFFs (Smyrnios-Romano et al., 1998) were used. The empirical method allowed the development of some research hypotheses by exploiting the Pearson correlation.

There are two main categories of FFs, which correspond to two different strategic and organizational categories, namely, the FFs listed on the large capitalized companies index (FTSE MIB) and the FFs listed on the medium-capitalized companies index (STAR). Each kind of FFs (large FFs and medium-sized FFs) has a specific effect on profitability and financial performance. Specifically, if a company is medium sized, family presence is a relevant variable in achieving better profitability and financial performance than NFFs of the same size; on the other hand, if the company expands to become a large one, the family presence is an irrelevant variable in terms of both profitability and financial leverage (debt ratio).

Limitations of the study concern the definition of the sample, as this paper focused on the industrial sector and the method adopted, as it could be integrated with some econometrical models. The implications of this paper are relevant for families and regulatory bodies because it helps them better understand the effects of governance and company size both on short- and long-term performance. Moreover, the findings of the study can influence the decision-making process of investors to identify the long-term outperformers listed on the Italian Stock Exchange.

This study contributes to the literature on FFs by defining two different categories of FFs, namely, large and medium-sized. It seems that larger companies record a weaker family influence on short-term profitability.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the differences in terms of economic and financial performance, between family firms (FFs) and non-family firms (NFFs) in the wine sector in Italy and France, where this sector is one of the most representative national economic activities.

This study is based on a sample of Italian and France companies operating in the wine sector. The sample, including medium and large firms, includes 288 FFs and 302 NFFs, for a total of 590 firms. Amadeus database represents the data source. According to Astrachan and Kolenko (1994), a firm is classified as a FF if family had to own over 50 per cent of the business in a private company or more than 10 per cent of a public company.

This study confirms that the family variable is relevant to achieve good economic and financial performance, and endow firms with different features. In terms of economic performance, FFs both in Italy and France outperform in. terms of return on equity and return on assets, though only Italian NFFs outperform in earnings before interest and taxes. In terms of financial performance, both in Italy and France NFFs outperform FFs in current ratio and liquidity ratio, while FFs outperform in solvency ratio.

Limitations of the study concern the method adopted, as it could be integrated with some econometrical models. The implications of the paper are relevant for families and regulatory bodies because it helps them to better understand the effects of governance on economic and financial performance. Moreover, the findings of the study can influence the decision-making process of investors in order to identify the long-term outperformers listed on a stock exchange.

This study contributes to the literature on family businesses phenomenon on wine sector, which represents one of the most representative of the economy of several countries and in which family businesses are widespread.

This study aims to investigate the intellectual capital (IC) dynamics in entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) by conceptualizing EEs as systems whose purposes include the (re)generation of the intangible resources needed for effective entrepreneurship. The study proposes a taxonomy of the key enablers of IC and develops a model that captures the unfolding interdependencies across the enablers of explorative and exploitative human, relational and organizational capital in EEs.

The authors purposefully selected a successful EE around an entrepreneurial university in Latin America as empirical case. Specifically, they investigated the IC dynamics of the EE in the context of a series of internationally awarded hackathons and related activities organized at the ecosystem level over three years (2019–2021). The research leveraged participant observations, in-depth interviews with multiple EE actors and archival documents. For the data analysis, this study combined the Gioia method with an abductive approach.

First, the study identified 27 operationalizable enablers of IC at the EE level clustered into human, relational and organizational capital and further differentiated these enablers considering the explorative and exploitative facets of IC. Second, it determined that the dynamic interplay across IC enablers is critical for an EE to flourish and evolve adaptively. This study concludes that assessing IC enablers and their dynamics can aid the understanding, evaluation and management of EEs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to conceptualize EEs as systems whose purposes include creating the conditions for an effective interplay of explorative and exploitative IC at the system level. The resulting taxonomy of IC enablers provides formative constructs that will benefit both scholars and practitioners investigating the crucial role of intangible resources in EEs and guide managers, entrepreneurs and policymakers in their decision-making processes.

Research dealing with non-financial reporting formats in public sector organizations is progressively expanding. This paper systematizes the existing literature with the aim of understanding how research is developing and identifying the gaps in need of further investigation.

A structured literature review was conducted by rigorously following the steps defined in previous studies. The structured nature of the literature review paves the way for a solid understanding and critical analysis of the state of the art of research on non-financial reporting formats in public sector organizations.

The critical analysis of the literature shows that most existing studies have focused on sustainability reporting in higher education institutions, local governments and state-owned enterprises, while remaining silent on the healthcare sector. Additional theoretical and empirical approaches should feed future research. Several areas deserve further investigations that might impactfully affect public sector organizations, standard setters, practitioners and scholars.

This paper offers a comprehensive review of the literature on different reporting formats that public sector organizations adopt to report various dimensions of their performance to both internal and external stakeholders. The structured literature review enables the identification of future directions for the literature in this field.